Conventionally, an electrically conductive paste prepared by mixing or compounding a solvent, a resin, a dispersant and so forth with an electrically conductive metal powder, such as silver or copper powder, is used for forming electrodes and electric wires of electronic parts by a printing method or the like.
However, silver powder increases the costs of the paste since it is a noble metal although it is a good electrically conductive material having a very low volume resistivity. On the other hand, the storage stability (reliability) of copper powder is inferior to that of silver powder since copper powder is easily oxidized although it is a good electrically conductive material having a low volume resistivity.
In order to solve these problems, as metal powders for use in electrically conductive pastes, there is proposed a silver-coated copper powder wherein the surface of copper powder is coated with silver (see, e.g., Patent Documents 1-2).